Links for 2015-01-11

The report’s revelations, based on a survey of nearly 800 writers worldwide, are alarming. Concern about surveillance is now nearly as high among writers living in democracies (75%) as among those living in non-democracies (80%). The levels of self-censorship reported by writers living in democratic countries are approaching the levels reported by writers living in authoritarian or semi-democratic countries.

the urgency of repealing the Irish blasphemy legislation cannot now be overstated. The same cartoons that saw their authors murdered for blasphemy recently, would see Irish authors hauled before our courts. The same nations that execute their citizens for blasphemy, wish to promote the wording of the Irish blasphemy legislation through the UN, in order to expand such provisions to more countries. Ireland is the only European country to recently introduce a new blasphemy law. Following the horrific recent events in Paris, let us be the next country to repeal our blasphemy laws.

If you haven’t heard about it, it is a compulsory database of the personal information of children, including PPS numbers, ethnicity, race and language skills, to be held for decades and shared across State agencies.

What if Silicon Valley had emerged from a racially integrated community? Would the technology industry be different? Would we? And what can the technology industry do now to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past?

Amazing article — this is the best thing I’ve ever read on TechCrunch: the political history of race in Silicon Valley and East Palo Alto.